Dr. Muhammad Salem Abu Assi, professor of interpretation and former dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Al-Azhar University, said that the search for a new interpretation of the Holy Qur’an preoccupied the thinker and religious scholar Muhammad Abduh, because interpretation before Sheikh Muhammad Abduh scholars were writing so that the scholars could read, addressing themselves, and privately interpreting. For the private, not the general public.
Abu Assi added, during his meeting with the journalist, Dr. Muhammad Al-Baz, on the “Chapters of the Qur’an” program broadcast on the “Extra News” channel, that the interpretation gathered grammatical, rhetorical, morphological, jurisprudential, fundamental, and philosophical information, each one transferring from the other, and placing this in the book. Then Muhammad sensed Abdo, may God have mercy on him, said that intellectuals, civilians, and the general public cannot understand the Holy Qur’an because it is an elite’s interpretation, so he said that we need a new interpretation of the Qur’an, and four years later, Professor Farid Wajdi began.
Muhammad Salem Abu Asi said that many scholars tried to search for a new interpretation of the Qur’an, and at the forefront of them was Imam Muhammad Abduh, but he stopped in his interpretation at Surat An-Nisa.
He added that his student, Rashid Reda, was attending his lessons at Al-Azhar, and he used to write and review with him, and Rashid Reda continued after him, that is, he quoted from Imam Muhammad Abduh verse 125 of Surat An-Nisa, and Rashid Rida began approximately and reached Surat Yusuf, verse 157.
He added: “But the school was the same. He took from this approach and method of interpretation, and Farid Wajdi came after 4 years and asked the same question, and wrote in his book “The Mufsal Qur’an” that we need a new interpretation that suits civilians and suits intellectuals, as the issue is old and new, and he tried to remain. Muhammad Abduh’s school was taught by Sheikh Shaltut, before him Sheikh Muhammad Mustafa al-Maraghi, and after them Sheikh al-Bahi. They wrote in the same way as Sheikh Muhammad Abduh, but no one completed it.
He pointed out that Imam Al-Maraghi interpreted the verses of some surahs on the occasion of the month of Ramadan, and he interpreted the days of the king, and Sheikh Shaltut interpreted the first ten parts of the Holy Qur’an. Al-Bahi also did not complete an interpretation of the Holy Qur’an, so the question is: Is the search for a new interpretation of the Holy Qur’an scientifically or even beyond Religiously a new old question.
He continued: “Perhaps we, in this era, are more in need of a new explanation than the previous era, because the era now is not the first science. The advancement of technologies, communications, knowledge, and sciences that have appeared in our era makes us more in need of an explanation than in the previous era, and those who will need more will come after us.” Therefore, the best interpretation of the Qur’an is time, because the Qur’an is a book for all of time. The Qur’an is God’s speech or the final word to the worlds, so the Qur’an will remain in existence until the Hour of Judgment. Life is changing, and therefore there is also a question: perhaps we may precede events. The Qur’an is the book of eternity. Are problems eternal? Or are problems renewed? And the demands are that The Qur’an answers these problems. It is true in a large part of the old problems that they exist. Hypocrisy is hypocrisy, disbelief is disbelief, and so on.
The professor of interpretation and former dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Al-Azhar University said that social issues and the social Sunnah are changing issues, and the Book of Eternity (the Qur’an) must answer these issues that were raised in the past, examples of which exist now and what is new.
He added, “Are we, in the new interpretations of the Qur’an, able to abandon this topic and say that the Book of Eternity is fit to answer all problems? It is valid, of course, but I am talking about, have we used the Book of Eternity to answer contemporary problems? Is the Qur’an not in one valley and we are in another valley?” .
He pointed out that before developing solutions for the optimal approach to interpreting the Qur’an, it is necessary to search for the problem, adding: “We must search for the disease first, for the disease was mentioned at one point by saying that Muhammad Abduh found that those who write in the previous interpretations are for the elite and not for the general Muslims. The second problem is that every interpreter He writes according to the culture of his time, and is sometimes dominated by narrations. When we examine the exegetical schools from their emergence until now, we find, for example, the Salafist or Salafist school, which finds a disconnect between its interpretation of the Qur’an and reality, and interprets the verses far from reality. It is unable to attract contemporary society to the Qur’an, because it does not He finds himself in it.”
The professor of interpretation and former dean of the Faculty of Graduate Studies at Al-Azhar University pointed out that the most famous interpretations in circulation that people used to buy, Tafsir Ibn Kathir, had a flaw in that every transmission and school was full of Israeli women and full of myths.
He added, “Can you imagine, for example, that he tells you that Surat Al-Ahzab was as long as Surat Al-Baqarah, so God abrogated it until it became like this? What this means is that Surat Al-Ahzab was 40 pages, so 35 pages were abrogated.”
He added: “And a narration mentioned by Ibn Kathir, which is an incorrect narration and an objectionable narration. This was the school of Ibn Kathir, and of al-Tabari before him, because it is an abbreviation of al-Tabari. It was flawed by the many Israeli interpretations in these interpretations, and for this reason some scholars reported that al-Tabari’s interpretation was transmitted by someone named Yahya, meaning that. His belief was distorted, so he used to insert into the interpretation of the Israelites, myths, etc., and ransom a school.”
He said that Al-Qurtubi’s school of interpretation was very involved in jurisprudential issues that were appropriate for his era, but perhaps these issues now are not appropriate for our era, so they use some verses as evidence, as we will discuss later, that it is permissible to marry a young orphan.
He added: “Of course, orphanhood before puberty. When an orphan is married before puberty, that means 5 years or 4 years, and you find some preachers now, and after we discuss it, they tell you, ‘Yes, if you can or can’t stand words that are not accepted by logic, the age in which we live.'”
He pointed out that contemporary interpretations, for example, “Shadows of the Qur’an,” were written by the same writer, but this book had two very serious defects. The first thing is that it relied in the narratives on Ibn Kathir alone, and the second thing is that it filled the book with intellectual issues that have ruined the world to this day. The term pre-Islamic times is the term disbelief. Islamic society, the infidel state, pre-Islamic society, the pre-Islamic state.”